The Green Man
Someone asked Rudolf Steiner, on a train, a significant question (paraphrased):
“Speaking on behalf of so much of awakened humanity: I know what I should be doing, how I should live, but I just can’t reach and sustain it in practice. What is wrong?”
Steiner thought for some time, in silence, then replied that the problem lay in the food people eat. He believed that there were extra energetic elements to our food, which modern agricultural practices have caused to become depleted. And that these elements were essential for the energy to feed the spirit, beyond the body. This led to his biodynamic agricultural practices and movement, but is also why so many, and those who can afford it, opt for organic produce and especially eschew commercially processed food.
Steiner was responding to a problem he perceived in his time, which is now around a hundred years ago. This problem, that he identified, has not departed – in fact it has become so severe that the very living surface of our planet is threatened, and the health industry of all nations is in state of freefall in its ability to not only repair bodies, but cannot possibly meet the escalation in mental illness. Certainly, the food industry is in crisis, and the burgeoning adoption of Regenerative Agriculture is hyper-alive to the desperate situation, offering exceptional practices to remedy.
But they are still too few and too late, to forestall the explosion in mental health demands that are now flooding across into political spheres, threatening the fabric of our global and national governance. The crisis in mental illness presented in social media and obsession with internet, fuelling a depraved fixation upon celebrities as an infused aberration of personal identity, is reaching global panic threshold. Homosapiens are tipping into collective psychopathy.
But let’s revert to this question of Steiner. It was not about the mass of humanity, but the hurdle that serious aspirants to spiritual growth face when they have learnt all the ideas, concepts, words and thrown themselves into that aspiration – they have glimpsed the horizon-point of their deepest yearning, and yet, find it impossible to actualise that vision.
My insight, at this late phase of my life, is different to Steiner’s. His prescription was accurate for his time, but not now. If any aspirant is still eating commercially processed foods as their primary diet, they are not ‘serious’ – by now, we all know that home cooking with fresh food is essential for health of body and mind. And aspirant that has not discovered the joy and craft of cooking is a fool. No, something entirely different has crept into the human condition which wasn’t especially prevalent a hundred years ago.
Humanity has become city dwellers, and lost their intimate relationship with the natural world. Unfortunately, I took this for granted in the past, and wrongly assumed spiritual aspirants would instinctively know that the ancient lore – ‘go into the wilderness alone’ – was absolutely the key prerequisite to a successful path. Wrongly, I say, because I belatedly realised that not only was this injunction not understood, but worse, not practised by many who pretended to spirituality.
Were someone to come to me today with that same question posed to Steiner so long ago, I would immediately say, leave the city and move to the edge of the natural world. Somewhere where your days and nights were infused with the presence of untamed nature. Not completely in wilderness – that has its own dangers – but on the edge, such that life is balanced between the constructs of humanity and natural wilderness.
So, the person would say, “That is impractical. I need to work and be near my family. Is it OK if I just walk regularly in the park and along the river front?” “No!” I’d respond. And there are many reasons why not. The first, is that it means you are not committed to the path of personal realisation.
The second, is that you do not understand the energetic quality of nature. Of course, a garden, a park, a tree along the roadway, are all beautiful and critical for our relationship with nature. But all these are there for human purposes, and as such they are like pets – tamed creatures for human desires. They lack a special etheric light which shimmers off the surface of all free beings which live for their own purposes – not slaves of another’s design.
There is no alternative option. If you have not lived sufficiently on the edge of wilderness, in order to feel the presence of free nature in your bones, then you quite simply lack the infusion of alien energy into your being, which alone supplies that extra boost we all need to launch ourselves out of instinctive life.
Those who learn from all the books and are touched by the true gurus and shamans of your time, and yet have not been able to relocate their living to also be touched by the alien energy of free nature, fall into a special trap. They believe themselves to be wise and possessors of hidden knowledge, and yet they are trapped between worlds – they know too much to return to the common fold, but lack the fire-power to reach that new, unfathomable world of spiritual light.
Unavoidably, instead of facing their condition squarely, truthfully, acknowledging failure, which would be too humiliating to look in the eye, they turn their ‘face’ back to the common world. And with the powers acquired from their aborted journey, which did at least yield some supra-sensible capacities, they revert to playing magician for the attention-paying spiritual dilettantes, who seek entertainment with incense. These ‘magicians’ are a sad and desperate lot, who live out their lives as circus curiosities.
Alas, there is no hope for them in this or the next world, unless in the depths of their subconscious despair, they rally one final burst of courage – face their calamity fully and strike out for freedom with every fibre of their being. They MUST leave their place of abode, and seek a new life closer to nature. Alas, there is no other way – the forces aligned against them are so vast and powerful, nothing short of an outrageous, reckless thrust into the unknown will jolt their entrapment and maybe, just maybe, cleave the slimmest of cracks through which their spirit can escape.
https://michaelmaher.bandcamp.com/track/04-the-will-to-survive
